There Are Many Reasons Why Stern Is so Grouchy

Sure, David Stern is grouchy.

You would be, too, after the season he’s had.

Even before it began, there was that Olympic-sized embarrassment in Athens. Then it veered into the stands at the tail end of a Pacers-Pistons match in November, a basketbrawl appropriately dubbed “Malice at the Palace.” Now, just when Stern’s game has its best chance in a while to draw an audience back in, he’s got Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy carelessly pulling the scab off an old, ugly wound.

You want to know how the commissioner arrived at a $100,000 fine for Van Gundy? Simple. Pat Riley and Phil Jackson got hit up for $50,000 each, in 2003 and 2004 respectively, for alleging that the refs had an agenda. Factor in inflation, unheeded warnings, Stern’s trying season, his disgust at hearing the same tired conspiracy rumors dredged up at the same time every year and --voila! -- Van Gundy may be lucky the meter stopped when it did.

Yes, the officiating in the NBA every night is a hit-or-miss proposition. Same as it’s always been. People who say a foul could be called on every possession are hardly exaggerating. The commissioner knows that better than anyone. The dimensions of the court weren’t laid out with players of this size, strength, speed and even skill in mind. Stern can order remedial sessions for the refs until he’s blue in the face, demand professionalism and take advantage of technology -- steps the league has already taken -- but the only thing he can guarantee is that their mistakes are honest ones.

And so the only thing different about the videotapes and scathing letters that owners like Dallas’ Mark Cuban, and coaches like Van Gundy, have been sending Stern lately are the faces and names; and that now they’re waiting on his desk the next morning.

Stern can’t catch a break turning on the TV, either, not even to watch his own telecasts. The other night, no less an expert than referee-baiter-turned-commentator Charles Barkley summarized Game 4 of the Spurs-Nuggets series this way: “One of the worst-officiated games I’ve seen in my 20 years associated with the NBA.”

And that’s saying something. As a player, Barkley handed over enough in fines for slamming referees to rescue Social Security. But even the Chuckster knew better than to cross the line from the specific to the general, from saying that one ref was incompetent to saying an entire crew was acting in concert on orders from above.

That was Van Gundy’s sin. And lighthearted as this episode began, no one will be smiling at the end. The 100 large the commissioner docked the coach may just be a prelude.

“If he’s going to say things like that,” Stern said, “he’s not going to continue in this league. If the attitude reflected in those comments continues to be public, he’s going to have a big problem with me as long as I’m commissioner.”

What Van Gundy said was that a ref not working the playoffs called him after Houston went up 2-0 on the Mavericks and told him the refs who were working the series “were looking at Yao harder” because of complaints to the league office from Mavs’ owner Cuban. Worse, Van Gundy said the tactic worked.

“Spinning” refs has been around as long as the games themselves. In the NBA, with the importance placed on stars both as on-court performers and off-the-court marketing machines, it’s even developed a protocol. One coach loses a close game or two and can’t find it in his heart to blame himself or his players. He always begins with a disclaimer, insisting that the officiating did not cost his team the game. Then he suggests the opposite is true

Riley and Jackson were two of the best, in part because they got so much practice in when their teams faced each other in the Eastern Conference year after year. Even though he coached the Pacers only briefly, Larry Bird showed real promise. He was so good at wheedling calls for his team in 1998, when Indiana took Jackson’s Bulls to the limit before bowing out of the playoffs, that he left Jackson sputtering about the officiating, “It was Munich ’72 revisited.”

That overblown comparison to an Olympic officiating fiasco that ended with the former Soviet Union stealing a basketball gold medal from the United States only cost Jackson $10,000. That Van Gundy got hit with 10 times that amount isn’t simply a sign of the changing times. Neither is Stern’s vow to get to the bottom of this episode, to take as long as he needs to get the name of the ref who called Van Gundy, and collect a pound of flesh from each.

The commissioner seethed when critics hinted the officials were out to please the league’s TV partners, its glamour franchises, influential owners or megawatt stars. When fining Cuban for repeated outbursts against the refs barely made a dent in the Mavs’ owner’s wallet, Stern practically shamed him into spending an afternoon working at a Dairy Queen.

Van Gundy should be so lucky.